@kolla

Quote:

Qemu with kvm acceleration?

Yeah, maybe, but I was thinking natively. I didn't know you'd be reading the post, so I didn't have my pedantic bit set.

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@matthey

Quote:

Matthew asked me about writing a Radeon Warp3D driver but the Radeon card documentation is poor

ALL WRONG !

Leaman can get the Radeon source code from OS 4.0, and you will have minor changes to have a working version for Warp3D 4.2a 68k...

On Amiga Classic, the worst is to do nothing...

Last edited by CosmosUnivers on 25-Oct-2018 at 07:36 AM.

@CosmosUnivers

But way? Vampire does not even have 3D chipset, it be slow as h**l…

As for Warp3D/MiniGL they tried to improve the API, but it only made it incompatible to older games. (transparent walls in Heretic II, just one bug)

Now it's not Warp3D that is being worked on its Warp3D nova that is being worked, a different API for modern graphics.

MiniGL is also being rewritten to use Warp3D nova insted of Warp3D, everything is changing.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Oct-2018 at 06:29 AM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Oct-2018 at 06:26 AM.

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Quote:

CosmosUnivers wrote: ALL WRONG ! Leaman can get the Radeon source code from OS 4.0, and you will have minor changes to have a working version for Warp3D 4.2a 68k...

That is a good point. A-Eon should have the driver sources for some Radeon cards from the AmigaOS 4 version of Warp3D. This should greatly reduce the time to make 68k W3D Radeon drivers. There are other updated Warp3D v5 drivers too (although missing indirect mode now). Karlos has publicly talked about his efforts to update the Permedia2 driver for example. All this work and never an update despite PPC being just as dead as the 68k now. The economics are probably not there for the 68k but they probably never were for the PPC either.

@matthey

I don't think so, The old Radeon drivers where made by Hyperion, even so how are you going to use AGP cards on PCI extensions card? or PCIe card on PCI expatiation bus?
Not to speak of the bugs in buster chip, it will just crawl over zorro III bus.

and way wast time on this when you pick old Sam440 system, that is many times faster then even a Vampire, that has all bus's you need to connect what you like, and where drivers you speak of already work, way wast time, assembler optimize, rewrite and hope works on bus card that does even support propper DMA.

Or just install WinUAE on your PC, and play 3d games in Windows10.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Oct-2018 at 09:49 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Oct-2018 at 09:41 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Oct-2018 at 09:38 PM.

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@CosmosUnivers

no one is blocking anything, there simply is no point in wasting time with outdated hardware.

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Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote: But way? Vampire does not even have 3D chipset, it be slow as h**l…

Yes, Apollo Core or Vampire W3D support is unlikely. The following are 3 possible ways to enable.

1) An Apollo core SIMD W3D driver is unlikely without floating point support in the SIMD unit.
2) Hooking some I/O port or pins to a PCI or USB GPU may be possible but is unlikely.
3) Waiting for 3D support in the FPGA is possible but unlikely because of limited space in the FPGA.

There was a lack of planning to provide 3D support.

Quote:

As for Warp3D/MiniGL they tried to improve the API, but it only made it incompatible to older games. (transparent walls in Heretic II, just one bug)

It could just be bugs. This could be the FPU rounding bug in the W3D Permedia2 driver (fixed in my W3D patch) or it could be the FPU initialization bug in vbcc for the 68060 (reported by Cowcat and fixed). Bugs have to be found and fixed or there can be all kinds of problems. W3D v5 did away with indirect mode which can likely cause compatibility problems. I don't know how good of an idea this was. One of the biggest performance differences my patched 68k libraries made was improving indirect performance which multitasks much better than direct mode. Maybe the PPC W3D code needed to be optimized like the 68k code and instead they discarded it due to poor performance.

@matthey

I believe it was effect of adding support multi layered textures and so on.
I'm sure issue might resolved if Hyperion had recompiled / fixed the games, they never did.
There is also issue with shadow in Wipeout1997, source code is not available, so issue can be solved. It might be also incompatibility issue between graphic cards, but I don't think so.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Oct-2018 at 09:59 PM.

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@matthey

Seriously who cares? If you want accelerated 3D graphics and modern games then buy a Tabor

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Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote: I don't think so, The old Radeon drivers where made by Hyperion, even so how are you going to use AGP cards on PCI extensions card? or PCIe card on PCI expatiation bus? Not to speak of the bugs in buster chip, it will just crawl over zorro III bus.

It doesn't matter who made the drivers but who owns them now. The bus doesn't matter so much for W3D as long as the board addresses can be found. A slow bus isn't too important for 3D if there is enough GPU memory to hold the textures which only need to be transferred once. The Voodoo 3-5 through a slow Mediator bus easily outperforms a Permedia2 card through a faster G-Rex bus for example. Quake using W3D with Voodoo 4 is 25fps in 512x384x16 on my 68060@75MHz Amiga.

Quote:

and why wast time on this when you pick old Sam440 system, that is many times faster then even a Vampire, that has all bus's you need to connect what you like, and where drivers you speak of already work, why wast time, assembler optimize, rewrite and hope works on bus card that does even support propper DMA. Or just install WinUAE on your PC, and play 3d games in Windows10.

Why use a SAM when I can use a similar performance Raspberry Pi for a fraction of the cost?

Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote: no one is blocking anything, there simply is no point in wasting time with outdated hardware.

What makes hardware outdated? When it can't be bought anymore? When the warranty expires? When it becomes much more expensive than hardware which can replace it? When there are no new designs like it? When it is a certain age? When support for it is dropped or takes years for updates?

It looks to me like all Amiga PPC hardware is just as outdated as my old 68k hardware.

Quote:

BigD wrote: Seriously who cares? If you want accelerated 3D graphics and modern games then buy a Tabor

Are you really rolling your eyes at me and then recommending an embedded CPU without an SIMD unit and with half an FPU for 3D?

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

no one is blocking anything, there simply is no point in wasting time with outdated hardware.

And you think the PPC have a better future than the 68k for our Amiga ? Really ?

Be in good faith for once...

There is no new softwares for MorphOS, or very few => the MorphOS Team will give up shortly, this OS is dead...

Very few new softwares for OS4 too, Tabor with a slow CPU an no FPU, X5000 high prices... OS4 Team will give up too after the MorphOS death...

No software = no future for a computer...


PPC is a dead end (since the beginning for me), back to the roots is the only solution...

Last edited by CosmosUnivers on 26-Oct-2018 at 05:54 AM.
Last edited by CosmosUnivers on 26-Oct-2018 at 05:52 AM.

@thread

Wow talk about a bunch of "grumpy old men"!

I like both PPC and 68K platforms and I am definitely not alone. Both definitely have their attractions, no need to slag one off over the other.

One cool thing about the Vampire is that it is an evolving platform. The V4 with the larger FPGA opens up more possibilities for future 3D graphics support. There are a lot of ideas being passed around on the forum. Here is a sample of a recent posting from Gunnar:

--------
I agree that "3D geometry transformation" is an important part of 3D game calculation.
Also very important part is the "line rasterization".

For the 3D geometry using Floating point has several advantages.

The FPU is designed for floating point calculation.
APOLLO 68080 has the most powerful FPU of all 68K CPUs.
So we have a working solution here.

For "line rasterization" we are working on a New-Subunit of SAGA which does this accelerated. You can imagine this as an build-in VOODOO.
--------

We just need to be patient and let the project move along in its evolution. They have a great working 68080 and are working on the AGA integration for the V3 core. There likely won't be much action on 3D for a while but you can see the wheels turning on the thoughts and ideas.

The Apollo/Vampire project is all about picking up where Motorola and Commodore failed. Evolving the CPU (Motorola) and the surrounding chipset/peripherals (Commodore). Linux is not the focus... at least for the short to medium term.

@matthey

Quote:

That is a good point. A-Eon should have the driver sources for some Radeon cards from the AmigaOS 4 version of Warp3D. This should greatly reduce the time to make 68k W3D Radeon drivers

Now : ACTION, just do it !

Last edited by CosmosUnivers on 27-Oct-2018 at 06:03 AM.

@CosmosUnivers & matthey

Quote:

Quote: This should greatly reduce the time to make 68k W3D Radeon drivers Now : ACTION, just do it !

And who would that actually benefit? The Mediator owners? How much are those exotic boards for a Zorro to PCI kludge? £280 odd pounds? Put that towards a Tabor that does already have Warp3D Nova etc and THAT is a modern 3D accelerated system at a much more cost effective price!

68k is a dead end for future 3D development. Get this right, the only way developer resources will be redirected to 68k is if the Tabor fails and if that happens we'll be left with LESS capable hardware for more cost! Buy the Tabor avoid a AmigaOS 3.1.4.8.9 future and stop grumbling about how Motorola ditched 68k! It happened and the Apollo team have given it a fun 'toy centred' time extension and that is all.

The future of Amiga is NOT 68k and if it's not PPC then it's probably ARM or a hybrid Rabbit Hole system like Stephen Jones is attempting or Rabbit Hole Computing's laptops. The Vampire boards fill a different niche like a SNES Mini type solution on steroids. I don't view their efforts as the future of the platform. Maybe in 1998/1999 the Vampire COULD have been the future of the Amiga more generally but the technology and know how wasn't there then sadly.

Answer this:
1) Can the like of Spencer and Tower57 run on the Vampire?
2) Will they ever run without a crazy amount of investment?
3) Is that investment worth it?
4) Is there enough money in the Amiga community to support it even if it was feasible?
5) Is the remaining money in Amigan's pockets best spent on proper Next-Gen systems in the long run?
6) Is the Vampire team selling a modern computer or a fun retro games system?
7) Does a fun retro games system have legs beyond the current retro games fad?

Last edited by BigD on 27-Oct-2018 at 12:09 PM.

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@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: If you want accelerated 3D graphics and modern games then buy a Tabor

Or just buy a Wii, PS2 or original XBOX .... nah scrap that.....

Buy an N64, PSP or Dreamcast to get the same kind of games!

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@Kronos

And yet we're comparing the Tabor which CAN run Warp3D Nova games with the equivalent of a 200 MHz 060 with NO inbuilt 3D hardware acceleration which would have been available circa 1997 if Motorola had still been developing it!

The Tabor CAN run Spencer, Blender etc and WILL eventually have a hardware accelerated internet browser and hence IS modern. The Vampire is retro, retro, retro.

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@BigD

First, doing nothing on 68k is the worst thing to do... New Radeon drivers won't save the Classic yes, but will be a good news anyways... I already said that the very high Mediator prices & Elbox block the 68k evolution...

After that, the low speed of the 68k is a problem : changing the CPU by what you want is not a solution for me, but a division... The PPC killed 68k developpement using captation (MorphOS & OS4 rob the last 68k coders for moving on this new crappy CPU), and the Apollo Team want the same disaster with the AMMX...

Back on Warp3D 68k : never really supported by coders, sadly... And from their own authors. For me, the only solution to save the Amiga Classic is asm 68k micro-optimizing : Kickstart, Workbench, useful drivers...

It's my belief and I'm working on this way...

The future will say if I'm right... or not !

@CosmosUnivers

Yeah maybe a license for a highly optimised AmigaOS will be picked up by a Californian startup for a driverless car system

... Chase those niches brother

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@BigD

Some people just prefer to use 68k Amiga systems and don't really care about the NG PPC hardware at all.

I also think you shouldn't be evangelising OS4 compatible hardware as hard as you do when you haven't even committed your own money to such a system. The last person I saw doing that turned out to be somewhat disappointed when they finally made their own purchase and has been griping about it ever since.

Another thing is that there's no reason purchase one over the other if your finances allow. I plan to get a Vampire V4 at some point, with a view to mounting it in a spare drive bay of my X1000.